A PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN AND A STILL LIFE OF HER BURGER

A Portrait of a Woman and a Still Life of Her Burger is a sharp and darkly comic critique of the contemporary “cute and tedious” social landscape and its effects on love, told from the perspective of a Gen X cynic. Set in Berlin in 2022, it is a belated coming-of-age portrait of Peter Pan adults biting the dust. Francis Laurie Schaffer, an artist in her mid-forties, has recently separated from her husband after a twenty-year marriage and fallen in love with a polyamorous young man who does not fully reciprocate her feelings. In an attempt to express her dissatisfaction, she begins writing about the relationships between the people she imagines belong to her polycule. But things begin to shift into a game of mirrors when Francis meets some of the people she’s written about. Candelaria Saenz Valiente is an Argentine writer, filmmaker, musician and performance artist based in Berlin. She is the author of a novel and a book of short fiction in Spanish, and the recipient of the 2022 “Women in Film” award from the Berlin Senate. A Portrait of a Woman and a Still Life of Her Burger is her debut novel in English.